He’s not
trying to be
arrogant.
He’s a blunt
and happy
person.”
KELEIGH BAGGETT98 http://www.racerxonline.com
altered or remodeled, they
did on their own.
“I remember helping set
elevations in the backyard,”
Blake says. “We rented a
backhoe and changed the
yard’s elevation by six feet. We
added block walls, a detached
garage, built a 1,300 sq. ft.
enclosed stucco patio. We
remodeled that whole house.”
Tom and Blake even built
their own motor home. Tired
of the maintenance tradi-
tional RVs required, Tom took
a Sterling truck and fi tted it to
a stretched semi-trailer frame.
The aluminum panels and
doors were bent and fastened
with $45,000 worth of aircraft
rivets. It even has pop-outs
and sliders. They never fully
fi nished the interior, but they
used it for three years; when
Tom can fi nd the time (he’s
running Canyon Steel Fabrica-
tors while helping at Blake’s
property), he’s going to fi nish it.
If Blake wasn’t riding on
two wheels or helping Dad, he
was dismantling something.
He tore apart anything with
bolts, and the two lawnmow-
ers and Jet Skis are still sitting
in pieces in Tom’s shop.
“I was going to rebuild
them!” Blake says. “I tore
them down to every seal,
bearing, and cut the whole
electrical system apart to see
how it was wired.” Despite
his knack for disassembling
engines, he’s proud to say
he knows how to rebuild a
four-stroke motorcycle. In
2008, he took the money
his parents gave him to hire
a practice mechanic and
bought a set of Snap-Ona motorcycle, he was jumping
a bicycle or riding around the
neighborhood with a shovel
across his handlebars for
building dirt ramps. When
Blake was seven, Tom came
home and found him emulat-
ing Evel Knievel.
“We were building a block
wall at the house, and the re-
bar was sticking up about fi ve
feet,” Tom says. “Blake and
Jake Canada were jumping
over the rebar! Playing around
rebar is a huge no-no.”
That block wall was just
one of many projects young
Blake helped with as a child.
Anything that needed to beChampionships, once pitched
a no-hitter, and was the fi rst
woman inducted into the USA
Softball of New York Hall of
Fame. His aunt Deidre races
outrigger canoes and teases
Blake when she gets a po-
dium fi nish on a weekend that
he doesn’t. Her daughter was
a competitive gymnast. His
uncles, Jason and Jeff Kawell,
raced the Baja 1000, and
Jason won the 250cc class
with Kawasaki Team Green in- Jeff is still racing.
Blake was a scrawny,
towheaded boy who would
only go inside to eat dinner or
sleep. When he wasn’t riding
KARDAS